Research by London’s Imperial College Business School has found that the UK’s wind turbines will last 25 years on average before they need to be upgraded; this is comparable to the performance of gas turbines in power stations.

The research revealed that even turbines built in the 1990s are still producing three-quarters of their original output — almost twice the amount previously claimed.

More-modern turbines are said to perform even better as they age and could have a longer life-span than first estimated. According to Imperial College, this further “strengthens the attractiveness of wind farms as an effective long-term investment”.

Professor Richard Green, co-author and head of the Department of Management at Imperial College Business School, said: “There have been concerns about the costs
of maintaining ageing wind farms and whether they are worth investing in. This study gives a ‘thumbs up’ to the technology and shows that renewable energy is an asset for the long term.”

The researchers compared wind-speed data from the NASA space agency, collected over a 20-year period, with actual data from each onshore wind farm in the UK and developed a formula that enabled them to calculate how ‘wear and tear’ on the machinery affects the performance of the turbines.